


heliotropism

by seventhstar



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Born to Make (Art) History Zine, Canon Compliant, Consensual Somnophilia, Everything is love, F/F, Honeymoon, Love Letters, M/M, Romance, The Alcazar Of Seville, Victor Nikiforov's Past
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-21
Updated: 2019-01-21
Packaged: 2019-10-14 05:49:35
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,716
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17502803
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/seventhstar/pseuds/seventhstar
Summary: “Is it morning?”“No,” Yuuri whispers. “Did you know we’re married?”Viktor blinks at him. “Yes,” he says. “We are.” Then he rolls over into Yuuri, face buried against his neck. His breathing slows; he’s fast asleep within seconds. Yuuri toys with the soft hair at the nape of Viktor’s neck, Viktor exhaling against his skin. If he could, he would dissolve himself in an instant, be drawn like the air into Viktor’s lungs and live nestled there in his blood, in his heart, always.Between one sweet thought about Viktor and the next, Yuuri’s eyes fall closed; he sleeps, too.Love letters in Spain are a Nikiforov family tradition.





	heliotropism

**Author's Note:**

> This is quite possibly the best thing I've ever done.

_Dearest Yuuri,_

 

_My treasure, I have always hoped that someday I would write a letter like this. I have a box of my mother’s stationary, and an expensive pen, and I have thought of what I would say—I have composed this letter to you a hundred or a thousand times._

_I am here with you now—you are still sleeping—and I can’t remember what I meant to write. I can’t remember a single word._

_I didn’t want to wake you, not with the short program this evening, so I went for a walk. I was standing by the seaside, watching the sun come up over the water. It was a winter sunrise, cold and pale, but it made me remember being fifteen and hungry, biting my gold medals after I won them to savor the taste. That’s how I feel about you, right now, so close that your hair brushes my arm while I write. If only I didn’t have cold lips and hands, I would steal a kiss now, to prove to myself that you are real._

_If I were to draw you a map of my love, it would be one without borders. Every river would run with my love for you, every field would grow nothing but my pride and affection, every forest and meadow would be populated by nothing but hordes of our future dogs. I think you doubt sometimes that I really do feel all these things for you. But I promise, while you might see “an average skater”, I see in you a whole country, a whole continent, an unknown planet which I want to learn every inch of._

_The number of things I love about you is too many to be listed in this letter. To do you justice, I would have to write for days and days, and still be here writing when the competition was over. But if I had to pick only one, it would be the way you laughed at me the first time I fell coming off the ice after practice. You tried to hide it. I think you thought I would be offended, but I promise you, every skater in St. Petersburg has laughed at me at least once. I fell so often trying to do the quad flip, you could have used the sound of my hitting the ice as a metronome._

_When you laughed at me, I felt like you were showing me your true face. Not the Yuuri you thought I wanted to see, but your real self. If you could to learn to laugh at me, I thought, you could learn to love me. _

_Yuuri, my darling, there is a table in my apartment I have tripped over once a week for the whole time I have lived there, and I don’t heat up my dinner for long enough and end up eating cold food. There is a street in St. Petersburg I refuse to go down because there was once a shop there with a giant rubber spider in the window. If you stay with me, all of these flaws will be yours to laugh at. I won’t mind. I love you that much._

_Will you still be here tomorrow, Yuuri? Will you be here when the season is over? After the next? In ten years, when I’ve lost all my hair and forgotten how to jump and have lines around my eyes, will you still love me? Will you still wear the ring that matches mine on your pretty hand? Say that you will. Say that we’ll still be together._

 

_With all my love,  
_ _Viktor_

* * *

 

Yuuri spends his first night as a married man watching Viktor sleep.

Viktor sleeps with his mouth open, the dark circles under his eyes more pronounced than ever. His damp hair is curling over his forehead as it dries. There was a poster Yuuri kept on the wall as a teen briefly, depicting a fey and delicate teenage Viktor with his eyes closed; this Viktor is a wholly alien creature. This Viktor was too tired to dry his hair properly and left a dab of moisturizer on his face because he was falling asleep at the mirror while he applied it. This Viktor made Yuuri any number of filthy promises while Yuuri drove them from Barcelona to Seville, and then fell asleep before he could make good on any of them.

He traces over Viktor’s features with his fingertips: over Viktor’s wide forehead to rub in the leftover moisturizer, down one soft cheek, pressing his thumb against his slack mouth. A tiny red mark sits underneath his left eyebrow, where Viktor plucked too zealously (Yuuri had heard him scream and had fallen off the sofa directly onto Makkachin. She’d spent the rest of the evening stubbornly sitting in Viktor’s lap.) Three freckles are tucked into the shell of Viktor’s ear, like a secret. There are the beginnings of crow’s feet around his eyes when he smiles. Someday, Yuuri will know the story behind every wrinkle, will know the origin of every line.

Yuuri kisses the back of Viktor’s hand—the underside of his jaw—his soft lips. Viktor’s lashes lift, the dim orange light of the city outside reflected in his eyes.

“Is it morning?”

“No,” Yuuri whispers. “Did you know we’re married?”

Viktor blinks at him. “Yes,” he says. “We are.” Then he rolls over into Yuuri, face buried against his neck. His breathing slows; he’s fast asleep within seconds. Yuuri toys with the soft hair at the nape of Viktor’s neck, Viktor exhaling against his skin. If he could, he would dissolve himself in an instant, be drawn like the air into Viktor’s lungs and live nestled there in his blood, in his heart, always.

Between one sweet thought about Viktor and the next, Yuuri’s eyes fall closed; he sleeps, too.

 

* * *

 

The red archway of the Alcázar of Seville is a portal into the past. Yuuri barely knows where to look; beyond the gates are a dizzying array of courtyards and arches, of fountains and orange trees, of room after room too intricately ornamented to be believed. Half-asleep still, Yuuri lets himself be led through the palace by the hand. Viktor woke him early, lips against his ear.

“Yuuri,” he said. “I want to show you something. Will you come?”

Yuuri blinked at him, long and low—was there even a question?—and accepted the tiny cup of espresso Viktor held outstretched. The dawn light coming in through the windows hurt his eyes; he dressed without looking in whatever Viktor handed him, and fumbled twice with the laces of his shoes before giving up.

“Here,” Viktor murmured, and he knelt down at Yuuri’s feet to tie them. His touch lingered; he rolled up Yuuri’s jeans until they sat above his ankles. Yuuri rested a hand on top of his head, not awake enough to speak. “Ready?”

He took Yuuri’s hand. Yuuri could only nod.

Now they’re walking arm in arm through the palace, which is shockingly empty. Yuuri wonders idly how Viktor arranged for them to have privacy; July might be the off season for tourists, but even in this sweltering heat, there ought to be someone else around. He can’t complain. To have Viktor to himself is all Yuuri wants.

Finally, Viktor leads him into a square chamber more elaborate than any before and stops. Yuuri looks up. He’s dazzled by the ceiling, which rises meters and meters above him in a perfect dome, adorned in gold in a pattern of stars. The walls, too, are gilded and painted bright blue: rows of geometric patterns and mosaics, balconies with curlicue supports in wrought iron. Each side of the room opens into another chamber through keyhole arches.

Yuuri barely knows where to look; he picks a wall at random and approaches for closer examination. There are birds and vines in gold, with what Yuuri thinks is Arabic script above and below. There are flowers made of white and blue mosaics, the petals shaped like teardrops, the centers shaped like crooked stars. A brass lamp is standing in each corner; the light gleams off the gold on the walls and glints off the ceiling.

He’s never seen anything like it.

“What is it?”

“Originally it was King Peter of Castille’s throne room,” Viktor says, distantly. He’s staring off into space. “The palace was built by the Moors, then used by the Spanish monarchy.”

“Wow.”

“Charles V and Isabella of Portugal were married here.”

“Who?” Yuuri flushes despite himself; he hasn’t done any research on the sights in Seville. He’d figured…well, to be honest he hadn’t figured on them doing a lot of _sightseeing_ during their three day honeymoon. Mostly he’d been concerned about the quality of the hotel’s room service and the discretion of their staff. Viktor’s never mentioned any particular interest of the history of the Spanish monarchy.

But now he’s wearing a soft, pensive look that makes Yuuri want to hold him. Viktor catches him watching and turns away, to stare out of the nearest archway at the sunlit courtyard beyond. Yuuri’s first instinct is to do the same—to stare in the opposite direction—but he realizes that that’s wrong. It’s what Yuuri would want for himself, but not what’s right for Viktor.

Instead he slips up behind him to loop his arms around Viktor’s waist, rest his chin on his shoulder, sigh softly in his ear.

“Vitya?”

“I haven’t come here since I was a child,” Viktor whispers.

“It’s okay.”

Whether it _is_ okay or not, Yuuri has no idea. He just holds Viktor tighter and waits.

“Isabella of Portugal was engaged to Charles V to cement the Spanish alliance with Portugal,” Viktor says. He covers Yuuri’s right hand with his own. “Charles almost married Mary Tudor instead, but she was sixteen years younger than he was, and the engagement fell through. Isabella was closer to his age, and had a large dowry and connections. So in 1526 she arrived in Spain to meet her betrothed.”

“Did she like him?”

“Like him? They met in the morning on March 10th, and were married that night. Here, actually.”

“Here?” Yuuri takes in the glorious room with new eyes.

“In this very room. They were instantly, madly, passionately in love.”

“They make us look so reasonable.”

Viktor laughs. He leans into Yuuri’s hold. “My mother painted them.”

“Your mother?”

Yuuri bites his tongue before he can say something idiotic, like ‘I didn’t know you had parents.’ Viktor never, ever talks about his parents. Everything Yuuri knows comes out of one line mentions in interviews and profiles he’s read over the years, and all of them say the same kind of thing. 

_…lost his parents at a young age, which fueled him to reach even greater heights in their memory…_

“My mamochka came here one summer to paint their wedding. She used to stand here for hours, sketching. One afternoon a group of students on vacation from Paris were taking a tour. While the guide was explaining the history to them, my maman saw my mamochka across the room, drawing.”

“Don’t tell me,” Yuuri says. “Did she instantly fall madly, passionately in love?”

“It seems to run in my family,” Viktor replies dryly. “Yes. My maman missed the rest of her tour trying to work up the courage to go introduce herself. When she finally did, my mamochka was gone.”

“No!”

“Yes! So then my maman hunted all over the Alcázar trying to catch a glimpse of her. Finally she went out in the gardens and climbed up the grotesque—”

“The what?”

“A kind of wall. I’ll show you later. She climbed up there so she could see the gardens from above, and she saw my mother’s hair—her hair was red—and she went after her.”

“And?”

“And my mamochka gave her the address of her hostel, they went out for coffee, and they were married before the summer was over.”

“Like mother, like son, huh?”

_“You_ proposed to _me.”_

“But it was _your_ idea that I propose. A student is supposed to learn from his coach.”

“You tried to back out of our engagement by telling everyone our rings were friendship rings.”

“Okay, that isn’t what I said!”

“It might as well have been. Tch.” Viktor turns to put his arms around Yuuri’s neck, their foreheads touching. “That was a good day, wasn’t it?”

“Yeah,” Yuuri says, smiling. He’s remembering following Viktor around, arms filled with shopping bags, watching him try on clothes and buy Yuuri and everyone in Hasetsu presents with great enthusiasm, being hand fed nuts and flan, realizing that this was as close to perfection as any day could come. “I’d never been sightseeing before a competition before.”

“I hadn’t been sightseeing in Spain since my parents died.”

Yuuri holds onto him tighter.

“They died during the off-season. I couldn’t handle it—I never took any time off to grieve. I thought…”

“You thought if you went back it’d too much?”

“They used to come here for their anniversary,” Viktor says. He blinks; a single tear drips down his face. Yuuri wipes it away with a fingertip. “They brought me one year.”

“Vitya—” Yuuri has no words. He can’t imagine the profoundness of the loss, can’t imagine what it was like for Viktor to lose what Yuuri can guess must have been his only family so young. “I—I’m sorry.”

“It’s all right.” Viktor digs a handkerchief out of his pocket and dabs lightly at his eyes. “I don’t know. Your family was so welcoming to me. And I thought, if we were going to have a life together…it’s not as if I can introduce you to them. But I thought this was as close as we could come to asking for their blessing.”

“Would they have liked me?”

“Yes.”

“How do you know?” Yuuri teases.

“They would have loved you because _I_ love you,” Viktor says. He kisses Yuuri very gently. “As everyone should.”

“Can you—” Yuuri fumbles uselessly for the right words. It’s pointless; he’s not even sure there are any. “Could you tell me about them?”

“They were ridiculous.” Viktor lets go of him, but before Yuuri can feel bereft, he takes Yuuri’s hand again. “Come see the gardens.”

“Did you put on sunscreen?”

“Yes.”

“Because you burn like a vampire.”

“I put on sunscreen,” Viktor says. “By myself, even. I thought my beautiful husband would apply it for me.”

“Tomorrow,” Yuuri promises. He clutches Viktor’s sweaty hand. “Your moms?”

“I don’t know if you would have liked them at first. Mamochka was very sharp, and Maman was very loud.”

“I would have loved them because they loved _you,”_ Yuuri says, and is rewarded by the way Viktor smiles, like his whole face has been struck by a ray of the purest light. “As everyone should.”

 

* * *

 

_Dearest Ekaterina,_

 

_My dearest, dearest, dearest Katya! My love! You are the very stuff of my life—you are the reason the sun rises in the east and sets in the west. How far Russia is from France! How far away you are! I miss you terribly. Already every comfort of home is nothing to me; already my bed is cold and hard when you are not in it._

_I will come to St. Petersburg as soon as classes are finished. I have already decided what kind of dog we will have, and what flowers we will grow in the windowboxes. (I would like a poodle, and I would like to grow something hardy and pink. I like pink best of all, especially on your cheeks—and on other places, too.)_

_The rest of my classmates laugh at me, since I skipped the rest of our Grand Tour to remain in Sevilla with you. Perhaps they think they had the better time of it, flitting from city to city crammed into the cheap seats on trains; but I, having been at your side for all that time in perfect bliss, know otherwise._

_Do you know what I am doing at this very moment? I am drawing. You should know that I never draw, Katya. Even the little stick figures I doodle in the margins of my notes are crooked. But watching you paint so unceasingly has inspired me to attempt art. I shall draw very badly, and you will laugh to see my creations, and when you laugh I will be happier than ever—and so I will consider myself a success, having created the most beautiful thing in the world (your smile)._

_I told my parents when I came home from Spain that I was married, and they thought I was completely ridiculous. “Clara,” they said, “What are you thinking, getting married on a whim like this? Marriage is a serious thing.” My brother laughed at me for ages, as I stood pining for you in the window until the breeze forced me inside again. No one understands what I feel for you, but I know what it is, and someday, they will all be in envy of my certainty._

_My darling! I can hear my name being called. Alas, until I complete all my coursework, my time is not my own; you will have to accept this meager offering for now. Write to me soonest. It is all that keeps me from rushing to you at this very moment, regardless of the consequences._

 

_Yours, forever,  
_ _Clara_

_P.S. I am not too dramatic. How dare you._

 

* * *

 

The intense sunlight renders all the colors of the gardens brighter. The water reflects it back so brightly Yuuri has to look away; the green of the foliage is so saturated that all the green Yuuri has seen before seems like it was only a shadow of the real thing, the blue of the sky is exactly the color of Viktor’s eyes. The smell of oranges is in the air.

Viktor has to lift a hand to shade his face as they walk down the grotesque, a wall of pale stone with a walkway atop it. Between the pillars and through the windows of the walkway, the whole of the gardens are visible on both sides. Viktor’s thumb keeps running over Yuuri’s ring.

“There.” Viktor points at one of the precisely trimmed arrangements of hedges with a bubbling fountain at the center. “That’s where my mamochka was.”

Yuuri can’t picture Viktor’s mamochka’s face, but he can imagine the way the sun would have burnished her red hair. Would she have had a sketchbook in hand, maybe? Had she been found because her head was bent as she drew? Did she have Viktor’s elegant hands but with graphite-stained fingers, or Viktor’s delicate skin? Had Viktor’s maman, when she finally caught her, seen a sunburn on the tip of her nose and longed to brush aloe over it, as Yuuri did for Viktor in Hasetsu all summer long?

“What happened to the painting?”

“I have it in storage,” Viktor says softly. “It’s beautiful.”

“We could hang it up. If you wanted. We could look at it together.” Yuuri leans in against Viktor’s shoulder, despite the heat that is only intensified by the touch of their shoulders together. The back of Viktor’s light pink shirt is dark with sweat. “Maybe that would be okay. If I were with you.”

“Maybe someday.”

“Okay.”

Before, Yuuri would have been afraid. He would have thought that Viktor was rejecting his help, or implying that Yuuri was overstepping by trying to involve himself in Viktor’s mourning. It’s only now, with the smell of Viktor’s high end sunscreen mixing with the scent of the fruit trees, that Yuuri is close enough to Viktor to understand him. It’s only now that he can disconnect from his own fears, and see that Viktor is laying out his fragility in Yuuri’s hands. For all the messes Yuuri has made of their hearts, Viktor never ceases to extend Yuuri this trust.

_He has more faith in me than I do in myself_ , Yuuri thinks, and he turns his head to kiss Viktor’s cheek. _I guess we’ve both improved._

The silence between them is comfortable as Viktor lets Yuuri lead. Yuuri has no idea where anything in the Alcázar is, so he takes them down the stairs and wanders at random. The way the foliage is arranged in concentric shapes, side by side in imitation of the geometric ornamentation within the palace, lends itself to walking aimlessly. He simply follows the curves of the outer edges and lets himself be drawn in deeper and deeper.

They reach two long pools, with a patio of checkered stone on one end. The trees on either side are verdant, with succulent oranges dangling temptingly without reach. They’re bitter, Yuuri knows; they can’t be eaten the way they are. But a part of him still longs to bite into one—just in case.

“This is the poet’s garden,” Viktor says.

His eyes have lost that distant look. He’s almost playful now, head tipped to the side as he gives Yuuri his full attention. Yuuri reaches out to touch him, lets his fingers run down Viktor’s chest without rhyme or reason.

“Did you write me poetry?”

“No.” Viktor blushes. “No. But my parents used to come here to exchange love letters.” He reaches into his pocket to produce a white envelope. Yuuri’s name is written on the outside in Viktor’s fine hand, surrounded by tiny hearts.

“For me?”

“For you.”

Yuuri sits down on the edge of the fountain, and Viktor joins him. Slowly, Yuuri opens the envelope; he doesn’t want to rip the paper. He wants to have this letter forever.

It’s not a long letter. The lines are slanted on the page. The words look almost careless, as if Viktor scrawled them off in a great hurry the way he does with a grocery list when he’s on his way out the door and realizes they have no milk or eggs. A blob of a dog has been doodled in the margins, one that a stranger would never recognize as a loving depiction of Makkachin.

And the letter drips with affection, with all Viktor’s longing, every word carrying the same force as a kiss. Every sentence, every paragraph, every letter is perfect. Yuuri reads it three times, once in bewilderment that anyone could write that way about him, again to imprint it on his heart, and a third time just to savor the moment. He would read it again, but he can’t. The words are too blurred by his tears.

He tucks it carefully back into the envelope and into his pocket.

“I didn’t write you one.”

“Don’t worry,” Viktor says, and he puts his arm over Yuuri’s shoulders. “There’s always next year.”

“Yes,” Yuuri says, and thinks that he will bring Viktor here again: in spring and summer and fall and winter, alone and in heaving crowds of tourists, until Viktor overflows with pleasant memories of the place, and can talk about his parents while looking Yuuri in the eye. “I guess there is.”

 

* * *

 

_Dearest Clara,_

 

_This is the first year we’ve exchanged the letters anywhere but the Alcazar, but I can’t say that I miss it. I don’t think I could bear to be away from him. I don’t know how I’ll ever bear to be away from him. Even as I write this, Vitya is sleeping beside me. He’s so small, Clara. Sacha looks like a monster next to him._

_He is a terrible baby, isn’t he? Colicky and lousy and smelly. But he’s not even a year old, and I swear I can see the beginnings of a personality in him. I think he has very intelligent eyes. Misha teased me relentlessly when he saw Vitya’s hair; he said that only an old soul like me could have a baby that was middle-aged at birth. He wouldn’t say it in front of you, though! He thinks you’re intimidating._

_I want to paint him. I want to do it now, while he’s too small to escape. I want to paint him with you, so that I can capture the look in your eyes when you hold him; if I could but snatch the light in your dark eyes when you smile at our son, I could put down my brushes forever. I was afraid when we brought him home. I thought that your love for him would overtake your love for me; I couldn’t know that our love for him would only increase our love for each other. How could I? I don’t think anyone can know what it is like, to cradle a tiny child between you and your beloved, and know that you have everything in the world you need in one place._

_(And Sacha asleep on our feet, of course. I didn’t forget him. Poor dog, I think he worries more about Vitya than either of us. We may be forced to take them on walks together until Vitya can fend for himself.)_

_Clara, my Clara, my everything. I cannot say that I love you most in the world anymore, now that Vitya is here. But I can say that I love you secondbest, and as a mother yourself, you know that that is the highest compliment possible._

_Have I become one of those mothers who only ever talks about her children? Hurry back to me, and tell if it’s so. I miss you already._

 

_Yours, always,  
_ _Katya_

++++++++

By the time they finish their tour and make their way back to the hotel—the winding, narrow streets of Seville are a maze that Yuuri could never navigate without Google Maps or Viktor’s unerring sense of direction—Viktor is flagging again. He yawns hugely while Yuuri strips off his sweaty shirt, and gives Yuuri only the most cursory glance even when Yuuri stretches both arms overhead in the most ostentatious manner possible.

Yuuri is almost offended.

“Do you want to go out for lunch?” he asks.

“Ugh,” Viktor mumbles. “Lunch. Can we order in?”

“Sure.” There’s a room service menu lying on the nightstand. “What should I…?”

“Whatever you like, I’ll probably fall asleep before it comes.” He yawns again. “I didn’t know planning a wedding would be so much work.”

Yuuri uses his limited Spanish, with judicious assistance from the internet, to order them paella and wine. When he puts down the phone, he finds that Viktor has stripped out of his clothes; in the most flagrantly teasing way possible, he’s sprawled out naked on top of the sheets, arm thrown over his eyes. Yuuri forgoes putting on a shirt in favor of lying down beside him.

“They said fifteen minutes, I think.”

“I’m not going to last that long. Do you want to have sex?”

“After you take a nap?”

Viktor laughs. “Why wait that long?”

“But you’re falling asleep. I can’t…I mean, not while only one of us is awake.”

“I don’t mind.”

Yuuri opens his mouth, closes it, opens it again. “I…what…the room service guy.”

Viktor shrugs. Yuuri watches the muscles in his shoulders and chest flex with a mixture of dread and delight; on one hand, the idea that Viktor might give Yuuri free reign over himself is terrifying, but on the other, a few drops of sweat linger on Viktor’s stomach, dripping down towards his open thighs, begging to be licked away. He knows Viktor likes to play at being helpless; he didn’t realize Viktor would allow himself to actually _be_ helpless.

“Okay,” he hears himself say, as if from another room. He rolls over so that he can touch his mouth to Viktor’s.

Viktor’s lashes flutter; his eyes close. Yuuri finds himself watching him sleep, again, and only comes out of it when he hears the knock on the hotel room door. Yuuri hastily tugs the sheet over Viktor’s body; it jostles him, but he doesn’t stir. He’s normally a light sleeper, but not today.

Yuuri couldn’t describe the taste of the paella if his skates depended on it, nor does he register the flavor of the wine he drinks in the vain hope it will steady his nerves. Viktor is still fast asleep, chest rising and falling under the sheet, nipples hard in the chilly hotel room air. Hands shaking, Yuuri takes off his jeans. He slides beneath the sheet to lie atop Viktor’s body.

“I love you,” he says, though he knows Viktor can’t hear. He cups Viktor’s face in his hands, trying and failing to resist the urge to rub his erection between Viktor’s open thighs. Viktor’s parted lips are like an invitation; Yuuri licks into his open mouth tenderly. Then he shifts himself into position, reveling in the slide of his skin against Viktor’s skin, until he’s rutting selfishly against Viktor’s limp body. When he comes he leaves a mark on Viktor’s shoulder in the shape of his open mouth, a bruise that Viktor will wear for weeks, stark against his pale skin.

He doesn’t bother cleaning them up, or waking Viktor, or even getting out of bed. Instead Yuuri snatches the complimentary notepad and pen, and beneath the hotel’s name and logo, begins to write a letter.

 

* * *

 

Eventually, they hang the painting up over their medal case. Yuuri arranges photographs on either side: himself and Viktor on the right, in their wedding clothes, smiling and crying, and Viktor’s parents in their wedding gowns on the left, the gardens of the Alcázar visible behind them.

People ask them about it, sometimes, and as the years pass Viktor is able to answer them with a smile.

“Oh, my mother painted it,” he’ll say. “Falling in love and getting married as quickly as possible is a proud Nikiforov family tradition.”

“Wait a minute, _I’m_ the one who proposed!” Yuuri will reply.

They spend most of the second honeymoon in Spain shut up in their hotel room. The bed is comfortable, the food is excellent, and the staff all have immovable poker faces. And if on the last day, Yuuri takes Viktor to the Alcázar and gives him a letter to read in the Salon of Ambassadors, the garden is full of shaded corners for them to hide in while Viktor cries with joy.

 

* * *

 

_My dearest Vitenka,_

_Since our honeymoon, this letter has been hidden inside the book I bought at the airport in Spain, with just those three words. I’d sit down to write more, but couldn’t figure out how or what I could say. It would sound better in Japanese, but you wouldn’t understand it, and you’d understand it in Russian, but I wouldn’t know how to say it. Not that you aren’t mine, or that you aren’t dear to me. I guess I’ve never been the kind of person who says things like “my dearest Viktor”. That’s just how they taught us to open letters when I learned how to write them in Technical Writing in college._

_I’m not a romantic person. I always thought of ‘love’ as something that would happen to me in the future. While everyone around me was getting in and out of relationships, I was focused on my skating. I was focused on getting better._

_I was focused on you. So maybe I was focused on love after all. I just didn’t know it._

_There was this moment when I knew I was going to fall in love with you. I remember it perfectly. We were finishing up practice, and I came over to take off my skates. And I put my hand on your shoulder for balance while I put my skate guards on—and then I panicked because I was using my idol, five time World Champion, five time Grand Prix Final winner Viktor Nikiforov as furniture._

_I was putting on my right skate guard (did I ever tell you putting the left one on first is bad luck? I cringe every time I see you do it. I always worry you’re going to fall) and I looked at you. You were smiling._

_You were smiling, like you were used to people using your shoulders for balance, and maybe you were. I realized I didn’t know, but I wanted to. I realized your lips were chapped. I realized it would be perfect if you kissed me, right then. (I came back down after you fell asleep to eat dinner. Sorry, I was lying when I said I wasn’t hungry, but I didn’t know how to sit and talk to you over dinner without freaking out, or throwing myself across the table at you.)_

_You said you wanted to explore me like a foreign country. I have to warn you, like most tourist spots, I’m full of obscene graffiti and suspicious litter. But I guess even places like that are beautiful to someone, just like the way the light hits your forehead is beautiful to me, just like the way the sound of your snoring makes me fall asleep. If I had to pick a favorite thing about you, it would be the way you say things without thinking about them. Talking to you is never boring. The first time you ever said something completely ridiculous to me (you wouldn’t let me wear lavender because it made me look jaundiced, and then proved it by getting out a color wheel), I realized that you meant everything you said. And that meant all the things I’d told myself couldn’t be true—like that I inspired you, like that when you put your finger on my mouth it meant you wanted me—could be true, too._

_I’m going to finish this letter now, I guess. I’m going to put it in an envelope and leave it on your pillow in the morning while you’re walking Makkachin. I’m going to write the last couple lines, hide it from your too-keen eyes, and start our first anniversary right by kissing you._

_You asked me if I would be be here tomorrow. I will. I’ll be there to rearrange the furniture so you don't bump into it and to protect you from spiders and bugs. I’ll be with you tomorrow, and the day after, and all the days after that, for as long as you want me._

_Yours, always,  
_ _Yuuri_

**Author's Note:**

> your feedback is very much appreciated <3
> 
> you can find me [on tumblr](http://pencilwalla.tumblr.com/) or [on pillowfort](https://www.pillowfort.io/seventhstar) or [on Twitter](https://twitter.com/starofseventh)


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